Vendetta. Meredith Fletcher

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СКАЧАТЬ held the feed out and didn’t move. Drawn by the smell of the grain, the colt approached skittishly and took the offering from her hand with his quivering, whiskered lips. His teeth chomped together hollowly.

      “Maybe you’ll find time to ride while you’re here,” Christine said.

      “But I’m not here to ride, am I?” Winter ran a hand through the colt’s wiry forelock as he ate. He threatened to shy away, but his greed to fill his belly outweighed his instinctive fear.

      “No, you’re not.” Christine’s smile slipped and faded.

      “Maybe we could get to that then.” Winter petted the colt. Amusement coursed through her when the young horse rolled his eyes wildly and trotted away after he’d eaten all the food. She let him go. She knew that she could get him back.

      Christine hesitated.

      Winter kept silent. She’d learned to be quiet during an interview while in classes at Athena. The person that wanted to talk—to confess or to simply tell something they no longer wanted to carry on their own—would talk to fill the void. Eventually the person would get around to whatever was on his or her mind. The trick was not to offer any deflection from whatever they wanted to talk about.

      “There’s no easy way to tell you this,” Christine started.

      The colt pranced on the other side of the fence as if taunting Winter to give chase. Despite the solemnity of the moment, she smiled at his antics.

      “I need someone to investigate Marion’s past,” Christine stated. “Someone good. Someone thorough.” She paused. “Someone I trust.”

      Even as open-minded about the meeting as she’d been, the announcement caught Winter by surprise. She forced herself not to look at Christine. She didn’t want the woman to see the disbelief in her eyes.

      “You don’t have anything to say?” Christine asked after a moment.

      Marion Gracelyn was the matriarch of this school! She was your best friend! Hell, yes, I have a lot to say! And a lot to ask!

      But Winter held back. “Christine,” she said softly, “you’ve already made up your mind to trust me or I wouldn’t be here. You’ve already decided that I’m the one you want to investigate Marion Gracelyn.” She turned to face the woman. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”

      Christine’s real eye grew moist. That was the only time any of the girls at school could tell which eye was a prosthetic. And Christine Evans didn’t often let her emotions show.

      “Thank you,” Christine whispered. “I told David you’d understand.”

      The mention of David Gracelyn’s name irritated Winter somewhat. He didn’t trust her or want her there. He’d made that perfectly clear.

      “Marion Gracelyn is dead,” Winter said. “She’s been dead a dozen years. Why would her past suddenly be of interest? You want someone to write her memoirs?”

      “No. This is of a more serious nature.”

      Leaning against the paddock, Winter remained attentive. She was a good interviewer and she knew it, but that skill was sometimes complicated if she intimately knew the person she was interviewing. She not only knew Christine Evans, but she respected and liked the woman tremendously.

      “Marion took a lot of secrets to her grave,” Christine said. “I couldn’t even imagine how many until these last few years. And those have been—” She stopped herself and shook her head. “Getting the academy funded and staffed was difficult.”

      Winter hadn’t thought about that while she’d been attending the school, but after she’d gotten out in the world and started working as an investigative journalist she’d realized just how monumental the undertaking had been.

      “You think Marion did something wrong?” The question didn’t come out as smoothly as Winter had tried to make it.

      Christine took in a quick defensive breath. “No. I don’t. Not intentionally. But so many things had to happen simultaneously in order to make the academy a reality. Even Marion, as good as she was, wasn’t able to be everywhere at once.”

      “She didn’t have to be,” Winter said. “You were there.”

      “Thank you for that.” Christine relaxed a little. “But there were still a lot of problems.”

      “We’re not talking about problems, though, are we?” Winter asked. “You mentioned secrets.” She couldn’t help pushing a little. It seemed like the time to do so. And even her patience wasn’t inexhaustible.

      “We’re talking about secrets.” Christine hesitated. “I think that one of those secrets has come back to haunt us.”

      “Which one?” For the life of her, Winter couldn’t imagine what it might be. Marion Gracelyn had always seemed so open and aboveboard.

      “Somewhere in Marion’s life, she made a very powerful enemy.” Christine pursed her lips. “Over the last few years, that enemy has made himself or herself known to us.”

      “Who’s the enemy?”

      “That’s part of the problem, you see. We don’t know.”

      Winter quivered inside. She loved mysteries. They were delectable little things that could encompass her every thought as she sorted them out. No matter what the secret was, it couldn’t remain hidden. There was always a trail. Normally that trail was marked by money or sex.

      “How did you find out about this enemy?” Winter asked.

      “That’s a long story.”

      Winter smiled at the older woman gently. “You brought me out here, to one of my favorite places, to tell me this much. Maybe we could go to your favorite place and you could tell me the rest of the story there.”

      Some of the sadness clinging to Christine lifted. She raised an eyebrow over her real eye. “Putting an interviewee at ease?”

      A mischievous grin pulled at Winter’s lips. “Perhaps. Is it working?”

      “I started being more at ease the moment you agreed to come.” Christine took a breath and nodded. “Let’s go.”

      As they strolled through the gardens the horticulture and chemistry classes maintained, Winter listened to Christine talk about the investigation several former students had put together into the “accidental” death of Lorraine Miller. Walking amid the bright spring tulips, lilies, amaryllis, daffodils and irises and talking about murder and illegal genetic experiments seemed incongruous.

      Hell, it is incongruous.

      Astonished, Winter listened to the story of Lab 33 and the genetically enhanced young women that were—essentially—Rainy Miller’s “children.” Christine didn’t reveal who those young women were, but she talked about the strange physical abilities they had.

      Winter couldn’t believe that only bits and pieces of the real story had ever surfaced in the media. There had been some flap over the story, but nothing had ever connected in the way Christine laid it СКАЧАТЬ